Menopause, as Brought to You by Big Pharma

[babylonsister]

Menopause, as Brought to You by Big Pharma

By NATASHA SINGER and DUFF WILSON
Published: December 12, 2009


MILLIONS of American women in the 1990s were told they could help their bodies ward off major illness by taking menopausal hormone drugs. Some medical associations said so. Many gynecologists and physicians said so. Respected medical journals said so, too.

Connie Barton started taking Wyeth's Prempro in 1997. She learned she had breast cancer in 2002, and later sued.

Along the way, television commercials positioned hormone drugs as treatments for more than hot flashes and night sweats — just two of the better-known symptoms of menopause, which is technically defined as commencing one year after a woman’s last menstrual cycle.

One commercial about estrogen loss by the drug maker Wyeth featured a character named Dr. Heartman in a white coat discussing research into connections between menopause and heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and blindness.

“When considering menopause, consider the entire body of evidence,” Dr. Heartman said. “Speak to your doctor about what you can do to help protect your health during and after menopause.”

Connie Barton, then a medical office assistant in Peoria, Ill., was one woman who responded to such messages. She says she took Prempro, a hormone drug made by Wyeth, from 1997, when she was 53, until 2002, when she received a diagnosis of breast cancer. As part of her cancer treatment, she had a mastectomy to remove her left breast.

Now Ms. Barton, who said in an interview that she used Prempro in part because her doctor told her it could help prevent heart disease and dementia, is one of more than 13,000 people who have sued Wyeth over the last seven years, claiming in courts across the country that its menopause drugs caused breast cancer and other problems.

The suits also assert, based on recently unsealed court documents, that Wyeth oversold the benefits of menopausal hormones and failed to properly warn of the risks.

In October, a jury in a Pennsylvania state court awarded Ms. Barton $75 million in punitive damages from Wyeth on top of compensatory damages of $3.75 million.

snip//

The documents that have surfaced in the Wyeth cases offer a rare glimpse inside the file cabinets and hard drives of a major drug company. And the cases demonstrate the importance of litigation in detailing exactly how drug makers operate their businesses, says Dr. Jerome L. Avorn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who has written about the subject in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

“The information coming out in litigation helps us understand how a belief in a ‘protective benefit’ of estrogens on the heart was able to spread like wildfire through the medical community,” says Dr. Avorn, who is not involved in the Wyeth litigation.

“Thousands of doctors prescribed the drugs for millions of women on that basis,” he says, adding that studies later contradicted the belief. “It will be very interesting to see whether the courts are able to connect the dots and make it clear whether this was a kind of medical ventriloquism on Wyeth’s part.”

PREMPRO is a combination of Premarin, an estrogen drug derived from the urine of pregnant mares and first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1942, with an additional hormone, progestin.

Part of the Premarin saga shows how a drug maker successfully and cannily expanded a franchise whose central ingredient is horse estrogens into a billion-dollar panacea for aging women. Yet several hundred pages of court documents also raise questions about another aspect of Premarin’s trajectory: how Wyeth worked over decades to maintain the image and credibility of its hormone drugs even as the products were repeatedly under siege.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/business/13drug.html?em

[tabatha]

1. Yet we are castigated if we doubt doctors and

mainstream medicine.

Although I have had successful experiences with doctors, I have also had some very bad - and for that I am very cautious about taking stuff where a change in diet can be just as effective.

[EFerrari]

2. So there is an upside to not having health insurance.

Geeze, what a mess.

[Blue_In_AK]

3. They tried to push these hormones on me

back when I was going through this about 10 years ago, despite the fact that I wasn't suffering any symptoms, not even hot flashes. The pills made me feel like crap emotionally, so I quit taking them after about six months, despite dire warnings that I was probably going to crumble within the next few years from osteoporosis or whatever. I admit to feeling some sense of smug satisfaction when the studies came out against hormone replacement.

[murielm99]

4. I took that drug for about six months, too.

When the doctor renewed the prescription, I took it for a short time, then quit.

I get the feeling that if it had been a drug for men, they would have researched it more thoroughly.

[Blue_In_AK]

5. I agree.

I think it's shameful the way they pushed hormone replacement on menopausal women, as if going through menopause is some kind of sickness rather than a natural process.

[demigoddess]

24. it is not only natural but a necessary process, the human body is not meant

to be in that ramped up condition that allows for child bearing. That is why we have menopause. I refused the hormones and then a couple of years later they did a u turn and stopped (for the most part) prescribing them. Now I feel the same about the cholesterol lowering drugs, I guess we will wait and see. But when I took them for a short time it nearly killed me. Feel much better without them.

[Better Today]

6. Had a hysterectomy in 1991 at 31, haven't seen a Dr. since. He

gave me a prescript for hormones, but they made me cranky like you said, and I received a return of my cystic acne, and gained 20#s in two and half weeks, all water weight.

So I threw them in the trash and have been fine ever since. I still have hot flashes, some quite intense, but with a sense of humor, I weather them well. Actually this time of year, I kind of appreciate them when they show up.

Like you, I get a bit smug after all the women who have told me (sourced from their doctors) that I would crumble, that hot flashes need to be controlled, etc. Yep, I'm quite glad to be free of all the hormonal BS.

[azurnoir]

11. a question if you do not mind

do you still have ovaries?

[Better Today]

13. Nope nothing but a little vaginal sleeve. Everything got pulled,

ovaries, tubes, I don't even have a cervix. Just a "sleeve" for sex that was sown shut at the top.

[azurnoir]

14. Same here

when I first started on HRT I experienced the same things you describe but I checked around the net something not really possible in '91 and found that 1/2 strength was available so I cut the pills in half and it all went away in short order, for me to not be on it I've tried the hot flashes and sweat (daytime) were so debilitating I could not work I'm a CMA and I would be rooming pateints or giving shots or what ever and sweat would start pouring off me in rivers not good not mention other stuff and it did not improve with time it grew steadily worse over a year so I went back on

[Better Today]

18. I have a lovely sense of humor about it, and I'm really quite dehydrated

most of the time for other reasons, urinary issues just easily handled by not over hydrating, anyway, I get dry heat and sort of glisten, not a full blown sweat except rarely in the summer. However, things like wearing makeup is just not possible, just even moisture to drip and smear. I've learned to love the skin I'm in, though. Every once in a while I'll experience one that will make me dizzy and nauseous for about 2 mins, but never longer. I also have this odd feeling that the hot flashes keep me from getting some illnesses. I've temp'd during a hotflash and I top out at about 103.6, my normal is a flat 97F. Seems to me that might actually serve to kill off virii when they are in the early stages.

Oh, I also wear layers, that way I can adjust quickly.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. Natural progesterone cream is supposed to be beneficial, red

clover, etc.




http://www.johnleemd.com/
Your Information Source for Natural Progesterone, Hormone Balance and Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy

Over a decade ago, Dr. John Lee first published his startling conclusions about conventional hormone replacement therapy (HRT): synthetic hormones don't work as predicted and, worse, they pose a health threat to women. His findings touched off a storm of controversy. But years later, research has proved him right. Now millions of women concerned about aging are looking for alternatives to HRT, and finding them in natural hormones, and Dr. Lee's effective, commonsense approach to restoring hormone balance.

Although Dr. Lee died in October 2003, his work lives on in his best-selling books, his audio and video tapes, and on this website, where you'll find a wealth of information about natural hormones, from "Frequently Asked Questions" for beginners, to biochemistry for experts.

[oregonjen]

10. I use progesterone cream and it has helped me

My gyn tried to help my symptoms of peri by giving me synthetic hormones, patch, pill, etc. My body DID NOT respond well. I tried 2% progesterone cream and I've noticed a huge reduction in my symptoms. It works for me at this point and time, so I'm sticking with it, along with dietary changes and regular exercise. It's expensive, but well worth it.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

12. It's expensive but well worth it.... AGAIN big pharma owns the

schools, only things that are capable of killing you can be called drugs, they are the only tools allowed, (paid for by insurance) so additional complications and poor quality of life is what we have... which no doubt adds to healthcare costs... imagine that.

[oregonjen]

15. My gyn poo-pooed progesterone cream

She said that they can't regulate the amount of progesterone that you are actually getting in the cream. I told her it was helping me and she dismissed it. I do respect her and she has helped me with other issues in the past, but in this case, I strongly disagree with her. A drug company isn't at the helm because it is a bio-identical hormone, not synthetic.

[virgdem]

17. I've been using Progesterone cream..

for about 6 years now and it has helped to reduce the mild hot flashes that I was experiencing. I recently changed OB-Gyn's to a male doctor (I had gone to female doctor's for the past 10 years). In May, I inquired about bio-identical hormones as I had read good things about them. This was his answer (paraphrased): "They are "designer" hormones and they are not as beneficial as the synthetic hormones now being prescribed." As he was telling me this crap, I looked at him as though he were crazy and basically lying to me. Long story short, I have an appointment on Thursday with a new female OB-Gyn. I can no longer go to the male doctor (btw, I hated his nurse too), as he was so smug and condescending to me. I had the same experience with taking Fosamax - after hearing horror stories about osteo-necrosis of the jaw after many women had taken this drug, I stopped taking it. Of course, my doctors just couldn't understand why I had stopped taking what in their minds, was a beneficial drug. Sometimes, you just have to make decisions for yourself that are outside of the mainstream of medical thinking. I am a big believer in natural supplements and vitamins, as they are not regulated by big PHarma.

[gkhouston]

23. If you get the cream from an accredited compounding pharmacy, why on earth

wouldn't the amount of progesterone be regulated? :shrug: That sounds like pharma rep bullshit.

[azurnoir]

8. Personally I feel HRT is a choice

that women have to make for themselves, the dangers of HRT have been as overhyped as the benefits were, the breast cancer risk is something like this in test groups of 3500 women some groups on HRT and other groups not in the group that was on 4 developed breast cancer and in the group that was not 3 did this was on average and came from the what this means to the individual addendum to the 2002 study, I was working in an GYN clinic at the time and to be honest none of female MD's that were on HRT stopped using it
I do use it because I in 2000 had my ovaries and all the rest of the plumbing removed for what turned out to be no medical reason- healthy organs were removed and for me the symptoms of menopause are literally quite debilitating but to those here that claim HRT is some kind of eternal youth drug trust me it is not. but what it does for me is keeps my breasts from becoming empty skin bags and well I don't have goatee or deepened voice either all of which would happen with out it
in short for some of us it is necessary

[pleah]

9. K&R

[Warpy]

16. And they STILL don't know what causes hot flashes

If men got the damned things, we'd have been rid of them decades ago.

[ThomCat]

19. If a lot of guys were getting them, I'm sure you are right.

I'm just one guy though, and I've been getting hot flashes for 20 years. Doctors don't really care when it's just one guy. Or a few of us. I'm sure there are probably a few other guys out there who get them too.

The doctors just note the hot flashes and say, "That's odd. I wonder why that's happening." and move on to things they can treat with meds. They don't bother even attempting to address my hot flashes.

If a lot of men were getting hot flashes, especially if the male doctors were getting them, I'm sure you're right. There would be a hell of a lot of research going on.

[Ilsa]

21. Right, just aggravating factors for some women. Coffee can bring on mine, as can

some foods. I eat alot of soy-based foods being almost a total vegetarian.

I'm on nothing. Happy to have stopped the birth control pills. I'm no longer on Lexapro, too which helped stop night sweats.

[Warpy]

22. I decided to tough it out

and that's before the dangers of HRT were fully known. I just knew my mother had been on HRT for many years and had developed breast cancer and thought it might have had something to do with it. I figured our bodies stopped producing estrogen for a very good reason beyond not sticking us with infants in our dotage.

I got hot flashes every fricking 41 minutes for the first few years. It was miserable and I pretty much gave up on sleeping except in short naps.

Nothing worked. I snagged an extra Premarin at work and decided to try it to see if I could buy myself a night's sleep. I bought myself a hormonal migraine, instead.

Now I get them every 2-3 hours except on bad days. There is no rhyme or reason to it and it doesn't matter what I eat. I barely notice them in winter. They're only nasty in summer.

If men got them, nobody would get them now.

[uppityperson]

20. k&r for researching health care issues rather than sports

thanks for posting this as I know those involved and it is very fun seeing it passed on.

[Thirtieschild]

25. My doctor (female) said no HRT in 1985

I took premarin, a month later had my first migraine, followed by a migraine TIA. Doctor said no to hormones in any form - no pills, no creams, no natural remedies, they all do the same thing and in my case too dangerous. I had hot flashes for the next 15 years. Finally, in my 70s, they're gone. I also felt vindicated when we were advised no to hormone replacements.